Sometimes Things Happen
by Grey L. Bloom
Summary: A short piece of nothing about everyone's favorite pig lover, Petulia Gristle. Set slightly in the future, so it'll probably become AU as soon as Wintersmith comes out, but still, I think, relevant to her character. Give it a read?


_Author's Note: After rereading A Hat Full Of Sky for the umpteenth time, I realized just how much I loved Petulia. So... er... I wrote this. It just happened this way. I had no control over how it was written. Isn't it lovely when that happens?  
_

* * *

Petulia Gristle, fifteen, short, and terminally good-natured, squatted unceremoniously in the rain. If she'd thought about it she'd have been glad of the rain, but as it was it was just the background noise to her own personal tragedy.

The death of a witch is a little thing, a private thing. There are very rarely family members clustered around the foot of the bed, weeping and carrying on and squabbling over the will. The funeral was usually just... just a funeral, just a burial, sticking a box in the ground and calling it good. Witches die alone. They see it coming, the blackness of the afterlife, and they cloak themselves in seclusion as they put all their affairs in order.

Death himself comes for a witch.

Petulia knew that, at least, but it wasn't much of a comfort.

As was usual for an individual of her personality and character, Petulia felt the heavy reek of failure on her neck and guilt weighing on her innards. She couldn't pinpoint the origin of either of these rather unpleasant metaphysical sensations1, but in the meantime they made her feel terrible enough for three murderers and a whole cloud of large dogs2.

And in the meantime, old Mother Blackcap was still dead.

Mistress Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg had come up to clean things up a bit and help with the burial. Mistress Weatherwax had brought rock-cakes with what seemed like real rocks, but Nanny Ogg, winking as merrily as she dared, swept them into her handbag "on accident" and replaced them with a basket full of steaming wildberry scones and some extra medicine for Eric, Mother Blackcap's favorite pig, who had come down with a dire case of Snuffling Woolies only three weeks ago and had a few days left before he'd be feeling fit and healthy enough for rolling about in the mud and inhaling slop through his gargantuan3 nostrils again.

They'd given Petulia Mother Blackcap's broom, with a few clucks and "well a few more bristles and a good rinse will have it right as rain, and you might want to see to that steering problem." They'd gone over the will in minute detail, poring over every word like the finest Ankh-Morpork lawyers and bickering over the possible meanings like the finest Lancre witches. In the end they'd translated the three-word will ("Petulia gits evrythin") into a sixteen page pseudo-legal document which somehow made it so that they could take a few old clothes without feeling guilty and/or petty.

And then they'd left. Petulia had eaten a scone, sat in front of the unlit fire for a few hours, and then had gone outside to the freshly-dug earth and squatted so that she could rest her chin on her knees. She squatted until it rained and even longer, and the rain washed her salty face and sent her frizzy hair in long tangled strands down her back.

She was... she was sad, and that was all. There wasn't any more and there wasn't any less, and anyone who has been sad, truly sad, knows just how much a little seed of sadness can grow into a great big tree of grief, filling you up as the branches extend and sprout little green leaves of terror and loneliness.

After a while it stopped raining, and the dying sun came out for one last song and dance routine before the curtain call of sunset. Petulia's hair dried slowly, twanging back into an unruly state of unholy curl almost audibly.

She stood up, and she went inside, and she gave Eric his medicine, and then she washed her hands carefully and ate another scone. She was putting the last bite into her mouth when she heard the thump outside, followed by retching. There was a pause of about half a minute, and then there was a timid knock at the door.

"Come in," said Petulia Gristle.

The door creaked open, and fourteen year old Tiffany Aching stood on the step. "Blessings be on this house," she said quietly, nervously.

Petulia smiled in a bright sort of way. "Eric should stop doing that... that _thing_ soon," she said, looking a little concerned as she spoke. "That's a blessing at least."

"That thing?" Tiffany said, and then her eyes crossed slightly with the sudden appearance of an extremely unpleasant memory. "Oh. Dear gods. Right. '_That_ Thing.' That _is_ a blessing."

Petulia hemmed a bit. "Would you like a scone?"

Tiffany looked at them with a nervous eye. She recognized the basket... could it be Granny's? That would be cause for worry. "Who made them?" she asked.

"Well, if anyone asks, Mistress Weatherwax did," Petulia said. "And, um, Mistress Ogg just, er, carried them for a, um, while."

Tiffany lit up. "Oh," she said happily, "I do _so_ love scones which Granny Weatherwax has made but have been carried by Mistress Ogg!"

They ate scones in silence, Tiffany looking terribly, terribly nervous. Ordinarily Petulia would have gone out of her way to calm her friend, but she was in a bit of a shock at the moment. And besides, the younger girl could have used a case of the nerves. It would do her body good.

"You know you can always talk to-"

"I know." Quietly. Smiling. "I don't have a lot to talk about."

Tiffany gave Petulia a look full of black deserts and ethereal sand, and said, "Really?"

No, not really, and they stayed up all night.

The next day it rained, but Eric got better and liked the extra mud anyway, so that was all right.

And, really, it was all all right. In the end.

* * *

1 She'd spent a lot of time with Tiffany lately; big words were inevitable.

2 Large dogs are always guilty. You can see it in their eyes. They just know that they could be a Bad Dog at any time.

3 Tiffany again.


End file.
